ancientsoxfogey wrote:

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Yeah, he goes through a concise assessment -- and screws it up. How do we have so bloody much invested in the rotation? I think his point is that the rotation is stellar in a lot of different configurations. Some of that value should and could be used to address needs on the other side of the equation, offense. Lester's signed for awhile but his salary right now isn't huge, Beckett has one more year at a cost that in the current market is very reasonable, after the Dice-K posting his salary is reasonable if he's healthy, Buchholz is cost controlled, and Wake is a bargain. So we paid a princely sum for Lackey and now we have "so much invested in the rotation"? So what if we spent a lot of money on a 3rd starter? IF he's worth it and is better than your usual 3rd starter, that just says we're putting together a top-flight rotation. The 1971 O's will tell you that a deep, topflight rotation is NOT lilygilding. While it's true that you can never have enough good pitching, the solution he offers is a way to balance out team needs at a very reasonable cost that is also affordable. Loading up on multiple expensive contracts - for the pitching and the bat - is not a way to do that.

On other issues, Ortiz was subpar last year. I guess Sheehan figures he can go only one way from here, but that isn't as obvious to me as he makes it out to be. Ortiz' trajectory has been on a downward trend for two years. His skillset is one that doesn't seem to age well. I think Sheehan's point here is a good one. In any event, he isn't going anywhere until after next season, so I don't see what Sheehan finds so "strange". In LF, Cameron is presumably the answer, so "pending a Cameron contract" sort of makes frivolous the "question mark in LF". Yes there's a missing piece on the IF corner as of Dec. 15. So?? There's over two months until ST starts and the Sox are missing one significant piece of the puzzle? This makes for a "strange" situation? Here, I think he means strange to be a synonym for unbalanced or lopsided.

I guess I don't see why this article is a reason why Joe Sheehan is a sportswriter and we aren't. Not a sportswriter so much as an analyst. He offers a detailed solution to getting hold of that big bat, using an idea that's barely been mentioned on this board, and doing it in the context of Hoyer and Epstein circling each other for a deal when both are quite aware of what the Sox have in their system. I thought it was very creative.